The study was commissioned by the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. The research was conducted by Emsi, a labor market analytics firm based in Moscow, Idaho.

“We knew that tech skills were increasingly in demand, but our study finds that even today the growth of demand is striking,” said Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center.

Tech skills were sought after across the industry’s segments — and were required in a growing share of postings for journalists with traditional reporting and editing skills.

Audience analytics and engagement expertise was also in demand, as were a variety of multimedia production skills.

TV broadcasters sought to hire Spanish speakers, as well as journalists with investigative skills.

Online job postings by more than 3,000 news media organizations in all major segments of the news industry nationwide dropped 31.7% from 2015 to 2017, compared to a 5.7% increase in postings by a benchmark set of non-media employers.

Tow-Knight and the Newmark J-School plan to publish a detailed written report on the study’s final results and methods this fall.